Zcash Alternative Zebra Released, Safer and Better

The Zcash Foundation has recently released the new alternative it has been promising, which is intended to be a safer, better option.

Called Zebra, it is entirely written on Rust, thus automatically making it the more appropriate option for use in the current age. It would seem that Parity Technologies has come through on its promise with the alternative.

In a recent press release, Fredrik Harryson, the CTO over at Parity Technologies explains the relevance of this new development. He also provided a window as to what else they are working on that could potentially lead to even more striking achievements.

"During our work on this Zcash client at Parity, we've gained insight and expertise into what it takes to build a Zcash client, while laying the foundations for a future Polkadot bridge. At the same time, the Zcash Foundation has been able to quickly kickstart a client implementation, creating a useful, competitive alternative to zcashd,” Harryson said.

“The community wins across the board, as there are now more core developers working on clients, with more interests represented and clients taking different approaches on how to build apps on top. Zcash can now boast a more diversified community that can effectively tailor experiences for Layer 2 developers as well as end-users."

For some context as to why coding Zebra using Rust instead of C++, as was the case with Bitcoin, Decrypt points out that it has to do with ease and reliability. This means that if the Zcash Foundation wants anything changed with the blockchain client, there won’t be much trouble actually implementing those changes.

What is really interesting about this new development is the fact that the client was released a full two months ahead of the initial schedule. While Zebra is still in its alpha phase and is thus subject to changes, this is still an achievement worth noting.